Self-compassion is often misunderstood for sympathy, kindness, empathy. Those qualities can be a part of compassion or self-compassion, but it might not necessarily be part of it.
It also seems that we are a little bit afraid that if we show ourselves self-compassion everything else will fall apart. But self-compassion is not about self-pity. It’s more about looking within and being curious about why you feel this way and helping you to create a relationship with yourself that is helpful for your health and well-being.
This video explains how and why self-compassion helps put our perfectionist and our inner critic a little bit to the side.
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Rather read a transcript of the video? Transcript of the video is at the bottom of this page.
Here is a short summary of the video content
- Self compassion is often a misunderstood concept.
Self-compassion is not the same as sympathy, kindness, empathy but those concepts can be a part of it. It’s also not the same as self-pity because when using self-compassion you are not the victim (as we sometimes think when we are in self-pity mode) but the compassionate friend to yourself. - Self-compassion is helpful to counteract the inner perfectionist and the inner critic.
It is very helpful to not always being in inner conflict with yourself and that’s where self-compassion is the most helpful. The inner critic always tearing you down for everything you think and do. Or feeling small and not taking action because you feel that everything has to be perfect. Those parts are here for a reason – to keep us safe but they can overreact. This is where self-compassion helps us move forward despite the inner struggles.
- Self-compassion is something we can train and work with.
This is a progress and something we need to practice. But it’s something we can practice so we can accept ourselves and see our accomplishments as something good that we have done.
- Self-compassion helps us create better self-care for ourselves
With self-compassion we can investigate what works for us and what does not. It can help nouch us in the right direction little by little. We can find out what works for us without just copying what other people are doing.
- Where can self-compassion help you?
Ask yourself in what areas in life can self-compassion help me the most. Where can I be more accepting. How can I show myself more compassion. Investigate what’s there, what’s going on without judgement and having a whip on your back all the time.
For me self-compassion was the missing piece for self-care and made me more capable to create a self-care plan that works just for me. It also took a lot of stress away because now I’m not always letting my inner critic and my perfectionist run the show. Self-compassion allowed me to find and accept the self-care that was most helpful for me, not anyone else. Me.
Now I hope you can find out where you can apply self-compassion so it works for you. YOU.
Love,
Ragna
P.s. I talk about things that are close to my Icelandic heart in this video so sometimes it was hard to find the right words in English. So the perfectionist in me wanted to delete the video. I decided to go ahead anyway. I’m practicing self-compassion and you can too.
Transcript of the video
Hey, it’s Ragna here, and I wanted to talk to you today about self-compassion. Self-compassion is often misunderstood for sympathy, kindness, empathy. Those qualities can be a part of compassion or self-compassion, but it might not necessarily be part of it.
I, for myself as a recovering perfectionist, and I think self-compassion is the thing that has helped me the most to counteract and work maybe with my inner critic. Instead, sometimes some days it’s harder than others, some days it’s easier. And the inner critic is sometimes not as busy tearing me down. And sometimes it’s quite busy, tearing everything I do and say and don’t do tearing it down.
So we all have that part of ourselves that is very critical, and it’s there for a reason, it’s there to protect us, and it thinks that is being helpful, but it might not always be helpful, and it might help just make us feel small and insignificant and that we are not enough and we don’t have a place and don’t have a voice.
So, it’s important to have something to counteract against it. And self-compassion is one of the tools that we have, and we can train and work with. And for me, this is the thing that has helped me the most. It’s something that has helped me take better care of myself because we often need, and it has, yeah, how often do what we feel that we need to do and without maybe taking the time to think if it right for us.
So self-compassion has helped me, yeah, work with myself instead of always pushing myself and, you know, having the whip on my shoulder and making things much harder than they have to be.
Instead of somehow with self-compassion, it helps me build resilience and helps me feeling more positive towards myself. And I feel that, I’m not impossible person to begin with. And I am allowed to see my accomplishments as something that I have done. And they are benefits for me, instead of saying, well you know, it’s useless, it’s not helping you at all.
So, I know it’s sometimes hard to find this part, this compassionate part of ourselves that can show us, be there for us and be resilient with us and help us take better care of ourselves and see, connect us with other parts of ourselves.
And it can also help us with soothing system, and, so again, activate that. So our threat system and our drive system are not as big. So our inner critic is not taking as active role, but it’s a journey. It’s not something that you just decide one day that you’re going to do forever. It’s something that we have to work on, and we have to be aware of.
And, but it’s doable, and it’s helps with acceptance of who we are and just gives us time and space to be ourselves more than just trying to fit into a box and be just that, don’t go out of the box because it might be dangerous.
So yeah, I think it helps.
So think about how self-compassion can help you because it’s not the same as self pity. Self pity makes you feel like you’re only one with this problem, and you’re… But we are, you know, humans, we are often have the same inner struggles, and it’s better to have the resilience and the compassion to deal with it rather than this self-critical pity.
So see if it’s something that can help you notice, maybe your thoughts around it because we often mix compassion with other terms like kindness and empathy and sympathy.
It can be, you know, all those things with the compassion but sometimes it’s not that because for me, at least if I just share one thing about myself is it has helped me with self care much more because it comes from self love and not like this, this thing that I have to do it, like I have to eat better because you know, I’m a nutritionist, I cannot eat unhealthy.
It comes from like, I want to take better care of myself. I want to have… it comes from a different place. And it helped me move further instead of just having the constant whip and that, you know keeping me, like in my place, don’t do it! Don’t do it!
You know, it helps and just have a think. Where in, when, what areas of your life care could self-compassion help you? Because it’s not just, you know, removing yourself from the situation, it’s looking towards it, seeing what’s there and being curious and, you know, maybe investigate it a little bit.
What’s going on?
What’s there?
So have a look in your own life.
See you later.
Bye.